The earliest mention of a Cudmore, found so far, is 1238 in Bampton Hundred.
This is a court record referring to a woman Eda de Cuddemore and a tithingman
Philip de Cuddemore of Cudmore. The case involved a burglary from her house.
This tells us that she was probably a widow but her family relationship
to Philip is unknown. A tithing was the Frankpledge group of ten or so
males age 12 or more who were responsible for the good behaviour of one
another. The tithingman was their elected head. This suggests a tithing
around Cudmore and a farm of that name still exists, but was the family
named after the farm or the farm named after the family?

Cudmore Farm is at the eastern end of Bampton Parish in the north east
corner of Devon on rolling country about 700 feet above sea level and a
few miles south of Exmoor. The Bampton Hundred comprises eight parishes
on the edge of Somerset, from Morebath 2 miles north of Bampton to Uffculme
10 miles south east, (five of these parishes are not covered by the IGI).
It's not yet clear which manor the farm was in, and this may have changed
over the centuries, but geography suggests at least Bampton, Doddiscombe,
Dipford, Huntsham and Nutcombe as possibilities.

The 1332 tax roll shows two Cudmores in Bampton parish, William de Codmor
assessed at 2 shillings and Walter de Codemor at 12 pence, their relationship
is unknown. These were the only Cudmores taxed in Devon, which does not
mean that there were not some paupers somewhere. The next tax return with
names was 1524-27 and this shows Henry Cadmore of Bampton assessed at £10
in goods and Rawlyn Codmore of the neighbouring parish of Clayhanger assessed
£6 in goods. However, by this time there are also Cutmores (variously
spelt) in south west Devon and it's possible that a migration and significant
variation to the name had occurred.

The last mention of Cudmores in Bampton, so far discovered, is John,
Henry and Thomas in the 1543-45 tax roll. There are no Cudmores in Bampton
in either the 1569 Muster Roll or 1581 tax roll. The surviving parish registers
start at 1653 and contain no Cudmores, nor do the Bishops Transcripts of
the registers starting 1609, albeit with many gaps.

By mid-16th century Cudmores are appearing elsewhere, Bradford and Petrockstowe
(some 37 and 32 miles west of Bampton) and Shobrooke about 19 miles south.
These seem to have been the most affluent, but they appear in over half
a dozen other parishes across north Devon notably at Tiverton a few miles
south of Bampton. They are also about 25 miles east in North Curry in Somerset
and further east still at Wilton in Wiltshire. The Cudmore diaspora was
well underway.

What's in a name?

It's useful to understand the evolution of surnames in England. Some
bynames were used in Anglo-Saxon times before the Norman Conquest of 1066.
However, surnames started to appear in the 12th century to differentiate
people with the same personal name. Hereditary surnames were well established
by the 14th century and had become widespread in England by about 1450.
In the intervening period it was common to find members of the same family
using different surnames, and as late as the 15th century apprentices and
servants still sometimes adopted their master's surname in place of their
own.

The 1238 record suggests the possibility of an inherited Cudmore surname.
Surnames alone are not a reliable method of establishing a family pedigree
in the earlier centuries and the 1238 families may not have a blood relationship
with later Cudmores particularly if the farm changed ownership later that
century. Of course if there was little population movement then many people
in a district could be distantly related.

Spelling was considered unimportant until the mid-18th century, and the
spelling of surnames was particularly varied. The possible Cudmore - Cutmore
split has already been mentioned and over two dozen different spellings
of Cudmore have been found. Literacy levels were low so an official recording
a name would have spelt it with their own phonetic interpretation. In the
early centuries an added complication was the records being written in Latin
or Norman French whereas the people spoke vernacular English.

English surnames originated from four main sources. The most common
is a place name. Then there are relationships, '-son' being the most obvious
but there are others, and it needs to be remembered that the Old English
(OE or Anglo-Saxon) personal names were used into the 14th century. Next
are names associated by occupation or office, however, Cudmore does not
seem to be one of these. Finally there were nicknames, not necessarily
polite ones by modern standards.

The first option for the origin of the name is therefore the place Cudmore.
This doesn't help much and begs the question what does it mean. There
are some options. First the word 'cuddy' means horse and this fits neatly
with the idea of 'horse moor' - with added credibility from the well-known
Exmoor ponies. Unfortunately 'cuddy' is a lowland Scots word and seems
unlikely to have been used in Devon. Furthermore, the Exmoor ponies are
more likely to have been called 'nags' or 'cobs' in the local vernacular.
An alternative may be 'cud' as a corruption of 'cut', meaning a place called
'cut moor', however, the terrain around Cudmore Farm does not obviously
fit this description.

The next options are OE personal names that could give rise to the 'Cud'
stem of Cudmore. There are two known ones CÒ_beort (Cuthbert in
modern English meaning famous-bright) and CÒ_beald (Cobbold meaning
famous-bold). In particular 'Cud' was a well-established diminutive for
Cuthbert. A place called 'Cuthbert's moor' seems an elegantly simple answer
and there is also a 1330 reference to 'Cuddas mor'. However, it may be
challenged based on whether land tenure would have permitted Cuthbert to
have a moor, a question that will be considered later.

A nickname cannot be totally be discounted. For example the first Cudmore
may have been 'Cud the Moor', meaning either someone (a Cuthbert) who was
notably swarthy or, perhaps, someone who distinguished themselves playing
a moor in a local mystery play or pageant.

On balance and preferring the simple solution, it seems reasonable that
the family took their name from a place known as Cuthbert's Moor. Of course,
we have no idea who Cuthbert was, apart from having an Anglo-Saxon name,
or when he gave his name to the moor or if he had any relationship to later
Cudmores.

But where did they come from?

The short answer is nobody knows. However, the history of south west
England offers a few clues.

Devon, while cold, was not always covered by the ice sheets of the ice
age that ended around 10,000 years ago and the English Channel was created
about 8,000 years ago, limiting migration from the south. There is evidence
of human settlement in Devon during the inter-glacial periods of ice age,
but continuous occupation was not re-established until that age ended.
The later stone age settlements and subsequent bronze age offer nothing
apart from wild hypothesising, but DNA testing of a man who died around
7000 BC in neighbouring Somerset revealed a close match with a living local
teacher. This suggests that successive incoming migrations absorbed at
least some of the existing population. It's also worth noting that the
region's tin and copper would have been important to bronze age peoples,
possibly at the European level, and that it's widely held that the Phoenicians
traded with the region in the last millennium BC.

The next important event was about 500 BC with the arrival of the Celts,
by then an iron age culture. The Celtic culture is first identified around
2000 BC in the area of Bavaria and Bohemia. It reached its height in about
300 BC, stretching from modern Turkey and Poland to Spain and Scotland,
before declining in the face of Rome and the Teutonic tribes. The basis
of Celtic society was the family group, probably 4 generations, living in
comparative isolation; there were no towns or villages until late in their
period and the Romans reported towns in Britain. Family groups often established
hill forts as havens, but there do not seem to be any in the Bampton district.
These family groups associated as tribes with a king. There was a three
tier structure of kingship and the Romans reported that there were 33 main
(highest tier) kingdoms in Britain with the Dumnonii occupying what is now
Cornwall, Devon and much of Somerset.

The Romans first invaded Britain in 55-54 BC then permanently in 43 AD,
the Celts were the people they found there, calling themselves British (in
modern English). The British kingdoms varied in their attitudes to the
Romans, some were pro-Roman, some hostile and some, including the Dumnonii,
neutral. Apart from subduing the hostile kingdoms and dealing with revolts
the effect of the Romans in Britain was far less than in other parts of
their empire, and Latin never took over as it did in Gaul. North east Devon
is outside the area of southern Britain that was most affected by Roman
settlement. Christianity was established in Britain in the 3rd century.

The Romans left Britain at the beginning of the 5th century and the Romano-British
leaders reasserted their leadership, which had existed under Roman suzerainty.
A reversion to British patterns started and many towns were gradually abandoned.
However, the British who lived throughout England, Wales and southern Scotland
were under threat, as had been late Roman Britain. From the north the Picts,
from the west the Irish and from across the North Sea the Teutonic tribes.
The Irish were, of course Celts, however, they spoke a different dialect
to the British (Q-Gaelic not P-Gaelic) and may have arrived (perhaps from
Spain) in Ireland less than a century before the first Roman invasion of
Britain. The Irish invaded and had short lived settlements in Wales and
may have invaded, with brief success, parts of Cornwall, before turning
their attention to Scotland where they were successful.

The Teutonic tribes, from the North German plain and its coasts had provided
the Romans with auxiliaries and other tribes such as Goths, Lombards and
Franks had penetrated deep into the Empire with the former sacking Rome.
In southern England the invaders were predominantly Saxon, starting in
the mid-5th century leading to the kingdom of Wessex in the south west.
Anglo-Saxon Britain became Christian in the 7th century. However, the
West Saxons did not start to occupy west Somerset and east Devon until the
second half of the 7th century and Exeter was seized by them in about 710
AD. While place names in Dorset and Somerset contain a reasonable proportion
of British origin, there are few in Devon. This suggests that Saxon occupation
was rapid, possibly because the British population was greatly reduced by
the plague of the mid 6th century and migration to Brittany. The place
names around Bampton all show OE origin - 'ton' meaning homestead, 'combe'
meaning valley, 'ham' meaning hamlet and 'hanger' a wood on a hillside.

Where the land was productive the basis of Saxon society was a small
village. This was inhabited by free and independent peasants called ceorls,
each the master of his household and who in the early Anglo-Saxon period
owned a hide of land that he farmed and had direct contact with his tribal
king. While he was independent, village agriculture was a co-operative
effort and by the 11th century may have typically comprised several hides.
The size of a hide is the subject of debate but in the west of England
was probably about 40 acres. The situation in Devon is unclear and while
Wessex generally followed the open-field system of intermingled strips of
land with different owners, this was not the case in Devon. However, where
the land was less good there tended to be more isolated farmsteads, the
hill areas of Devon show this pattern and Cudmore Farm could have this sort
of origin.

The various Viking and Danish raids in the 8th and 9th centuries made
little lasting impact and somewhere tucked away without obvious wealth would
not have attracted their attention. But the most notable event was the
Norman invasion of 1066, bearing in mind that the Normans were in fact 'Frenchified'
Vikings.

The Normans' did not arrive in large numbers and their impact was at
the highest levels. They introduced a feudal society, whereby the King
owned all land and granted it to his tenants-in-chief, who further allotted
it and so on. In essence they sequestered the land on a large scale but
did not settle it on a small scale. Of course, they were not all Normans,
there were followers from other parts notably Bretons who had originated
as migrants from Devon, Cornwall and Wales in the middle of the first millennium,
their modern language being closest to Cornish.

The Normans established one of their 33 Devon baronies at Bampton, and
the remains of the castle still exist, how closely this barony aligned with
Bampton Hundred is unclear. The Domesday Book of 1086 was basically a tax
assessment of all the manors in the kingdom. It provides some details of
the manors near Bampton including:

Later manors such Nutcombe, Doddiscombe and Petton all in Bampton parish
are not mentioned suggesting they did not exist in 1086. Walter de Douai,
also nick-named Walscin was a Norman from North Douai, he had holdings in
Devon, Essex, Somerset, Surrey, Wiltshire. Wulfric was obviously an Anglo-Saxon.
Earl Harold was, of course, King Harold to the Anglo-Saxons.

Conclusions on the Cudmore origins

On balance, while the possibility of Cudmore ancestors arriving with
the Normans cannot be totally discounted, the odds are against it. Similarly,
it's highly unlikely that they arrived with the Romans. All the indications
are that very few British remained in Devon when the West Saxons arrived.
The obvious conclusion is that the Cudmore ancestors in the Bampton district
were Saxon.

However, there must be the caveat that we should assume there was always
some internal migration in Britain and people and families might have moved
from anywhere.

Oral History - Spain and Wales

There seem to be two oral traditions about Cudmore origins. Oral history
usually has a basis of fact but along the way the story becomes altered
as interpretations are added.

First, several branches of the family have the story of a Spanish ancestor,
possibly an Armada (1588) survivor. An Armada survivor sounds unlikely
- there doesn't appear to be any record of its ships founding so far west
in the Bristol Channel and the Cudmores were not a coastal family. Then
there is the matter of surnames for a male survivor and a female one seems
even less likely. However, a Spanish migrant, male or female, in an earlier
century cannot be totally discounted, but no evidence has been found. No
evidence of one in a later century has been found either, and would almost
certainly be documented somewhere.

The second tradition is that the Cudmores came from Wales. This could
have several interpretations, but it must be remembered that the Welsh did
not start to use surnames until late 16th century. Before this, it was
patronymics and those that migrated to England typically adopted a name
based on their personal name, for example Evans was adapted from Ieuen (a
form of John), these 'English' names were exported back to Wales when the
Welsh adopted surnames. There are documented Cudmores in Devon far earlier
than the 16th century and there is no sign of the name ever appearing in
Wales. Furthermore, this oral tradition seems to appear in only one branch
of the family indicating that it originated later rather than earlier.

This leaves four possibilities:

sometime pre-16th century a Welshman arrived, acquired Cudmore Farm and
adopted the name, of course if it was before about 1200 then it could mean
the Cudmores originated in Wales, but why didn't he follow the usual practice
of an English version of his Welsh personal name;

a surnameless Welshman was employed by the Cudmores as a servant and
adopted their name, again why not follow normal Welsh practice;

a possibly surnameless Welsh family arrived in North Devon and decided
Cudmore was the name for them, perhaps without any connection to the original
Cudmores. A family called Raddon changed their name to Cudmore in the 17th
century. This name can be traced back several centuries in counties in
south and central England, making a Welsh connection unlikely and there
don't seem to be any others; or

a Cudmore married a Welsh girl and the subsequent oral history became
confused. There is an indication of this because in 1718 an Emlyn Cudmore
was baptised in Okehampton and Emlyn is a quintessential Welsh personal
name, perhaps he had a Welsh mother.

While neither a Spanish nor a Welsh connection can be discounted, apart
from Emlyn, there is no evidence of such a thing after about 1550.